So that post on the trip to the forest never got written.Much as I wanted to write about the BEST red bus materializing magically in the dark rain. Much as I wanted to write about the magic of the trail, quite unconcerned about one kind of grasshopper or another, happy to move far ahead of the group discussing this kind of leaf or that, just the path rich with the scent of the wet earth and the song of the water gushing and trees with room to grow and more.

So the post on the trip never got written and I was frazzled by the weekend criss crossing the bridge that connect the have-nots of the distant suburbs with TOWN, attending endless meetings speaking non stop. Pays the bills.

In the end it was the different kinds of air conditioning that got to me, cool to chill to very cold, though I should have guessed from my lethargy on Sunday, where I had to talk myself into my usual temple visit. Monday, one more conference and post midnight I think the fever was a hundred-two. Old dependable ayurveda- kadu, karyatu, sudarshan in a convenient tab form, Trishun. I spent the last two days in bed, using my sick leaves after ages. Yesterday morning when I awoke it was with immense gratitude for Baba and my grandfather, a doctor, who in some intangible form from another plane had spent hours sitting vigil, I could sense that. So many debts of gratitude.

So finally back at work today, though drained by whatever virus this is. No reflexes worth the name yet, so no driving, not on my road you don’t.

Anyway a ton of n’papers got looked at. And I had enough oats porridge to last a few weeks. Cant get any stranger. And Ferrari Ki Sawarii is very good.

Nagla. water over rocks, and the sound of green.

Yesterday in the park I watched a beautiful moth thrashing about in a delicate-as-lace -steel spider’s web. And I walked away.

I met the crow lady yesterday. A silver-haired Anglo-Indian with a penchant for cats and birds, including the beautiful baby crow perched on her shoulder. And immense bitterness—no faith in anything at all, not even an afterlife, not even a karmic balancing or life-lessons. So much so that my day seemed drained for a while, and I had to make an effort to return to my prior expecting-nothing state. I resolved to never be like her. Even choosing delusions or bitterness or angst or “rewards because you’re a good person” or victimhood is a choice, and one is always free to take a choice. Always.

Haven’t laughed so much in ages either. Put puzzles together with five year old D and my friend her mom—though I must admit Snow White got too much, with the seven dwarfs. The kid much too sharp for her age and fluent in three languages. All energy and brightness and hullagulla despite the fact that she has no usable teeth, and hence has been and will be on a paste-like diet till her permanent teeth grow in. Choice!

Have been working late for a bit so the decorated stage that suddenly came up by the roadside for Janmashtami just sort of registered on the memory fringe. So when I turned the corner past ten pm on Friday, I was flummoxed to find the road full of Govindas, at least a few hundred young men seated on the road after the day’s dahi-handi revelry. I was terrified and the lone lathi -wielding policeman was worried, but volunteers materialized out of nowhere, cleared a path for my little Miss Blue to navigate that sea of humanity, to the chorus of “Make way for Aunty ”.

Three of those men could have crushed the car in a second if they’d wanted to, but Mumbai is Mumbai.

Where are you from?

Where am I from?

How is one “from” someplace?

Can I be from two places?

Why? What to do, my loyalties switch between the home town and Big city bad lights.

In one, I grew up. The other made me grow up.

Why not?

Can I be from ten places?

What about the original village of family origin? Am I not from there? Some of the words I use, some of my attitudes?

How am I “from there” if I’ve been to that place for two days in all my life?

Then, what about the city of birth? The trademark bridge like steel lace joining the two shores…seen after forty some years, how can that be home? Or is the imprint on your genes for ever and ever?

Talking of genes, what about the community story, about the great migration from the temple city, from centuries ago? Does it stay on, does it play on, even if you’ve never been there?

Can I be from ten places?

So...Where are you from?

Have watched more TV news since Saturday afternoon than for the entire year.  Have stared at the tiger-pouncing raging waters of the Bhagirathi, its color a dirty brown, angrily surging ahead. Have watched the shots of the Ganga looking like a violent sea, breaching banks. Pushpavathi and Alaknanda swollen to many times their earlier gentle- stream sizes. Of all the tourists and pilgrims stranded on the highway for hours, stopped short by landslides. Hundreds rendered homeless in the cold. And those buildings toppling over like a piece of wobbly jelly.

When nature stops us short, we are NOTHING.

A few more hours and I would have been there, trapped in that chaos.

Thank you, Mister God.
Once again, I have been shielded, protected from havoc.

Flash floods in Uttaranchal.
My trip is cancelled.

Ok, so here we are! butterflies, mice in the pit of stomach, drumbeat pulse and all.

Trying hard to imagine what 14000 ft feels like.

Back after the 12^th, God willing.

Rain began as soon as the train pulled out of Baroda station, fine rain that left droplets on the huge picture windows, and later the downpour drenched the countryside in shades of green and caused impromptu lakes to reflect the skies, and instant streams to rush to wherever they were flowing to. Stations rushed by, and the sky was variations of slate to the horizon, unnamed trees  flowering in the distance, some bore new leaves. I stared till it was too late, although the book I was reading is pretty absorbing too—a magical new world built on snippets of our pasts. Must be one of the pleasures of life, reading to the gently rocking movement of a train. I’m quite liking Meluha, though I’d like to run a red pencil through the adjective OD.

The other day I googled and read something and was fairly troubled. If you place someone on a pedestal, admire their spiritual accomplishments, read and savor their words with patience and respect—and then learn something to the contrary, a blemish, a major character fault—it is upsetting, disconcerting to say the least.

No smoke without fire. If that makes me a nasty bitch, so be it.

And like Caesar’s wife, I expect someone to be purer than driven snow.

You may have once held my respect. Once.

But I’m afraid I don’t give away my discrimination. I will not. Not this or any other lifetime.

There was so much that one had conquered, so much merit that one had earned, why would someone operating on a presumably higher plane throw it all away for mortal ties? Biology? 

But at a stage as advanced, and a path as arduous but known since several centuries to be demanding—have the baser instincts not been burnt out, conquered to a meaningless state long long ago? Isnt this basic?

Is my filter wrong, am I judging too harshly, and who am I to judge?

If this is true and not the handiwork of a posse of deranged women, what else is true, and what is not true?

Why would someone throw away the earning of several lifetimes?

I’m calmer after watching the forest yesterday, the play of light and the cycle of destruction and new life.

The take home?

Better recognition of the pitfalls.

An increased sense of wariness.

A refusal to be “influenced” blindly—if this is ego, so be it.

Let me remember, even the sage Vishwamitra had been waylaid.

You sit on the edge of your chair, gawking, heart staccato, you stare at the precarious line of a road snaking up the high mountains. The world’s highest motorable road, the anchor mumbles. He’s short of breath. Nerves tingling. No  guard rails, no barricade, nothing.. over that edge and you’re nothing. The temperature’s minus ten, minus twenty..Boulders teeter held in place by invisible string, you’re riding first clutch and your machine gasps for air every revolution… you sit on the edge and thank the Gods you’re sitting in your living room, and you whisper Khardung La...

DO NOT MISS.

Perilous Journeys/ Criss Crossing the Himalayas/ Marsh Mokhtari….National Geographic Channel

There’s a YT clip as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIRjdJ1L1oo

Yesterday I saw the ending shots of A Passage to India.

Must have been a super movie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Passage_to_India_(film)

Why only the ending shots? I was waiting for Ram Kapoor to finally meet Priya, whom he believes is dead, but who isn’t. Amazing how this story goes on and on and on.

Finally decided to go on a tree-watch trail this weekend. 

Else I’ll get antsy and pack and unpack and repack.

Shabnam Virmani at the Ramkrishna Math in Khar.
Still echoing
**

Before I lose the essence, let me put this in clumsy words.

On Sat I trekked through the urban village shortcut and reached Khar in time for Shabnam Virmani’s concert. Accompanied by one back up vocalist and one percussionist, she held the standing room-only audience enthralled for two hours.

Her repertoire of Kabir bhajans crisscrossed the country. The Baul ballads of West Bengal where despite the language gap the meaning made you cry—and I don’t cry easily, not anymore. The songs of Malwa and Rajasthan’s hamlets carried with them the fragrance of the tilled soil and endless horizon. After the performance and the standing ovation, and past the notes of the music, there was a soundless place she took us all to, a place of silent echoes where words are immaterial

And this is the part I snipped out:

While walking through that up-and-down hill village (now a lineup of shanties and tumbledown homes) the sole and upper of my sandals parted company. Even as the heavens opened up. Found a content cobbler who repaired these instantly and was surprised at tipping—a quiet man who packs up by eight  so as to spend time with his family, and revises homework with his sons every evening—wants his sons to go to college.. A builder’s board for a redevelopment scheme has been up for five years, and well yes, they’d get more space in rebuilt flats.The home-grown air about the place would be lost... Once, leopards roamed these slopes where industrial units and fancy office blocks stand tall.

The ceiling of the vaulted meeting room was far higher than in modern structures, and the bookcase held volumes of leather-bound natural history journals dating to the early 1900’s, just past a plaque with the names of the eight founding members, circa 1883. The adrenalin surge got me going, propelled me past heritage buildings, as well as a  crush-packed-to- the-max local train ride, and then from the station making my way via two once-villages (gaothan) back to work…what I will not forget is the grins on a gaggle of kids being escorted back from school, maybe 7 years old or so and perfectly at ease in the crush, nudging and teasing and laughing.

If you hang on by the door, you get a glimpse of some beautiful trees.

Yesterday I took the bus! Forgive that exclamation mark, but I enjoyed the smooth ride, and the elevated view a BEST bus offers. Nowadays tickets are quite hi tech too,digital slips, none of the ticket-stubs of my school-college days.

And I finally got home the tulsi sapling from the temple, which I visited after the ritual mourning  period. This morning I had it potted at the park, and then placed in my tiny box window. I returned grinning from the park. I’ve made new friends--children who live in the nearby municipal quarters. We watched frogs and a lone tortoise in a pond.

Limitless is very good. Solid science to the idea too—if serotonin reuptake inhibitors are possible, this is possible as well. Smart pharmaceuticals.. wish I had thought of this...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limitless

Great essay, a take off on The Snow Leopard. Must find the book.

http://blog.contrarymagazine.com/2012/07/searching-for-the-snow-leopard-again/

The more I see, the more I read, and the more I interact, I see how critical it is to protect one’s own energies—a bounden first duty.

This delicacy of language

hints of subtext

restraint

Allusions and shadow

Lost in translation

The new form brittle, angular, brash

Like my words, wringing hands

words

That always fell short, no matter what

Now-- I can see that

“The hills! You must be going to some Ashram I bet!” the stranger scoffed.

“No…” I said, gesturing a walk.

Why is pursuit of the matters of the spirit looked down upon by “high” society—a choice of last resort, a time pass, something one pursues if one has nothing to “do” in life?

Mildly amused.

If my crisp work persona is what you see, good!

It is another matter that my God is the God of  the skies and hills and trees and rain and the whole world is his ashram--as also his play thing.

My moment of gut-punched epipany struck at the shop.  I was shown that shoe designed with perforated sides so that water could go through… returned home and watched as much as I could on YT. Swirling mists and craggy peaks. Keeping my fingers crossed and praying hard.
Whatever is willed.

Published!
http://flashesinthedark.com/2012/07/09/sandstone-with-gem-inlay-by-mira-desai/